Looking back to move forward

Moving Forward
I am almost done with Grad school. Holy CRAP! This seems almost impossible, and yet I'm so close that it scares me. I think I have more fear than I do excitement. I like change though, I am usually afraid and slightly worried about what is to come but I generally handle it well and await the adventure. I think what is really scaring me this time is the huge UNKNOWN of it all. Not only do I need a job right away, I have a family to support after all, but I have to move since my housing is tied to my schooling. I am trying hard to be relaxed about all of this, and to trust God, He has after all proven himself over and over to me, but I am certainly experiencing my doubts right now.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:33-34

Sometimes I take for granted verses like this, because I've heard them too many times, I've let the truth of these words pass me by because I've become numb to them. For some reason because I've heard them over and over they have lost their meaning. but that's not the case, the words haven't lost their meaning, the meaning is lost on ME. I'm the deadened one. God's words haven't stopped being true, I've stopped myself from living them. 

I have plenty to be focusing on today, RIGHT NOW. A paper that needs to be written, an Oral Defense that needs to be prepared, dresses that need to be sewn, children that need to be cared for, and a God that desires for me to slow down and take a minute with Him. 

Looking Back 

As I am preparing to move forward, and concurrently stressing about the present too, I have started looking back as well. At the begining of my grad program we were asked to write out our faith story as part of one of our intro classes. At the time my divorce had just gone through, although we had been separated for some time prior to that, but everything was still very fresh for me. During a special church service for Lent I found myself really opening up to something that God was trying to show me, to tell me. The "vision" that He gave me (I'm not sure if they would be classified as visions, but often when God speaks to me its through pictures or dreams, I do not know of a better way to explain it), became the introduction to my faith story. I recently went back and read it for the first time in at least a year.  This is a poeticlike way of verbalizing what I saw that night, I have shared this before but it again was almost two years ago.

Scars

           She is exposed, naked and bleeding on the floor. Deep cuts are across her breasts and each cheek; ropes bind her and keep her from reaching out for help. The cuts are from others, but the ropes are of her own creation, binding her, strangling her and taking her breath away. Her mind wanders to how she got here, who gave her these cuts? Why did she let someone put these binds around her making her even more helpless than she was before? A flash, a picture races across her mind, the husband she trusted verbally striking her over and over as promise after promise is broken. Another flash and she sees the truth being revealed where she had previously been fed lies, and she notices more blood coming from where her heart lies. Yet another view of her husband cutting her with his actions and words, she feels as if she has been slashed across her breast, the very essence of her womanhood, while he is being pulled in another direction by the sin he has allowed to bind his own heart.

It is then that she feels the warm hand on her arm and the quiet assurance that through Him all things are made new again. Her eyes are opened and she no longer sees blood running out of the places where she has been cut, but scars still cover her body and a few ropes remain binding her. She asks Him why she still has ropes, and why there are still scars if He has closed the wounds. He answers that He would gladly help her remove the ropes if only she would let Him, and the realization of her own entrapment becomes clear to her for the first time. He then touches the scars and tells her that she will bleed no longer but the scars will always be a part of who she is, there is no eliminating the past, but she can see them as reminders of what He has rescued her from. He then poses a question, “Where should we go from here?”

            This is my faith story, yes there is pain but more importantly there is tremendous joy. A joy that can only come from the Lord, and honestly I believe that sometimes it takes great pain in order to experience true joy. I could write several pages about my life and the events that led me to where I am with Christ now, in fact, I did but then decided to go another direction because it didn’t convey what I really wanted my life to be about. My life now, for the first time, is truly centered on Christ. I’m not perfect at it, I still struggle with relinquishing control, I still find myself getting lost in thought on matters that are of no importance or benefit to my life, and I still do stupid things sometimes. I am, however, trying desperately to allow Christ to conform me into wholeness to Him.

Sometimes its important to look at where you've been in order to best assess where you are. In some ways I can see growth in myself from where I was when I wrote this. In others I am saddened to say that I am still bound by ropes and I have not let God heal some areas yet. I have still been holding my own hand over the wounds trying to keep from bleeding but insisting on doing it myself. Let me tell you, a lot of blood is lost in two years. I am still glad for the pain that I had, and sometimes still, go through. I think what is hardest about reading this is realizing that the scars still impact me negatively. While I can look at the pain and use it in a positive way, in a way that glorifies God, some of them are still painful to the touch. Are we ever completely over those things that once so deeply cut us? 
I also had the realization that in all the stress of being a single mom in school, and especially once I started my internship and have been gone so much from home, I'm not sure I can honestly say "my life now...is truly centered on Christ." I want to say that, and at times it is more than others. But for at least the last year it has definitely gone in waves, and the down waves have been longer than the up ones. I am not satisfied with that. I cannot allow myself to be satisfied with that. I am already ALIVE in Christ....that was promised to me a long time ago, why am I choosing not to live in that?

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:3-4

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life." John 5:24

"For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy." Psalm 92:4 

(All verses are from the English Standard Version)